All Time

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Ekstra

♣♣♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣

Loida Malabanan (Vilma Santos)
is a single mother who has supported her daughter’s education until college by
being a bit player, or in other words, a TV or movie extra. In her latest
project, she tackles several roles such as that of sugar cane farmer and house maid,
the salary for which she is reserving for her daughter’s tuition fee payment.
Aside from being her primary means of livelihood, acting has also been one of
her life’s biggest passions, the culmination of which is a talking role in the
finale of a soap opera where she gets to work with a has-been actress who has
been her inspiration since she was young. Ekstra is a film within a film, a
playful jab on the world of bit players, but more than that it is actually an
interesting take on the life of just another human being striving to make ends meet
by doing what she does best, or what she thinks she does best. It is an honest look on
the lives of those nameless faces that you often see onscreen.

This movie is funny enough to
be appreciated by subscribers of the the mainstream, and will probably have a nationwide release
given the versatility of the formula that it has chosen to adapt. The lines are
hilarious; those of the film crew are brutally frank, while those of the actors
themselves are the usual cheesy and contrived dialogue you often hear in
telenovelas, intentionally delivered to be hilarious.

The bit players are somehow
caught in between. Are they cast, crew, or both? In any case, the film tends to
highlight this blur between their real functions on the set. At the end, each
one of them is just earning a living, but obviously with different perks. As
much as members of the industry might try to deny it, an evident hierarchy
exists, and we get to see a glimpse of that which we do not have a chance to
witness often because what is usually presented for public consumption are just the
finished products.

In a way, you get to empathize
with them and the devotion that they have for the job they have chosen for
themselves. As one of them would like to say, it is better than staying at home
doing nothing. The climax of the movie is something depressing because you see the
heroine falter, and in the end she realizes that it is just a job after all,
perhaps even a thankless one at that, where one minute you are praised to the
high heavens just to be given a good dressing down the next. You would like to
hate on some characters after that scene, but you get to realize that it is
just a part of the job that could happen anywhere regardless of the
profession in question. The job has to be done, and the dilemma
will always be on whether you could do it or not. If not, someone else can and will do
it for you.

Casting a veteran actress like
Vilma Santos for such a role is already a funny irony in itself, but given the
unquestionable acting prowess she has acquired through how many decades of
being active in movies, this must have been a a walk in the park for her. This role
is not that different from the previous hardworking and caring mother roles she
has done. The only difference now is that she gets to play a role that has
something to do with the industry in which she belongs, and the novelty is
derived from that. In the end, casting someone of her caliber is just right
because she is able to operate in different levels of acting required for
several scenes, which could be a bit demanding because she is an actress playing
the role of a supporting actress playing various roles. Her shining moments are
those of her playing Loida, the silent moments where a single tear says more
than the speaking lines of any of her other roles.

There are many cameo
appearances: Cherie Gil, Marian Rivera, Piolo Pascual, and Pilar Pilapil, to
name a few. Most of them play themselves, or at least a slightly modified version of
themselves as they saw fit for this movie. Nevertheless, everyone does a great
job in making everything such an enjoyable watch. This movie is too funny to be
ignored, and it will probably not have a hard time finding an audience that
would appreciate it. To some extent, it could be compared to Ang Babae Sa
Septic Tank because of the premise of a movie about filmmaking, but this one
appears to have more mainstream appeal in terms of presentation.